Ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. A. G. Vinogradov
up to 20 m high; gives valuable wood (mahogany or rosewood).
Yew spiky
This ancient Indo-European name also does not exist in the Indo-Iranian languages.
«Yew is spread in Europe from Scandinavia to the mouth of the Danube, its eastern border roughly coincides with the border of beech… Yew in historical times is not found in Eastern Europe and the Northern Black Sea… yew is especially common in the more southern regions of the Caucasus (starting from the North Caucasus), Asia Minor and parts of the Balkans, «writes T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov.
The situation is repeated again, similar to the «beech» and «hornbeam». Yew is growing in the alleged Near-Asian ancestral homeland, is also widespread in the new Iranian homeland, and there is no Indo-European name for this tree in the Indo-Iranian languages, just as it was not in historical time in Eastern Europe and the Northern Black Sea region.
Yew berry
Fir, spruce, pine (map 4). Fir (Abies), a genus of evergreen conifers of the pine family. The trunk is straight, up to 80 m high, with a thick, usually conical crown. The bark is smooth with nodules – containers of resin. The leaves are linear, flat, at the apex for the most part blunted, below with two light strips along which the stomata are located.
About 50 species; grow in the mountains, less often on the plains of the Northern Hemisphere. In the USSR – 9 species and approximately 16 species introduced. Valuable resins are obtained from the bark.
In the USSR, Siberian fir (A. sibirica) is most common – in the north of the European part and in Siberia, on the plains and in the mountains (to the upper border of the forest). A slender tree up to 30 m. high. Fir balsam is obtained from the bark, fir oil is obtained from needles and branches.
In the Caucasus, a relict species of Caucasian fir, or Nordmann fir (A. nord-manniana), a tall (up to 50 m) tree with a lowered crown, grows. Lives up to 500 years.
In Europe, white fir (A. alba) grows, giving valuable wood.
T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov indicate that «fir in its various forms has been known since the Middle and Late Atlantic period (7—4 thousand BC) in the Transcaucasia and Western Asia, as well as in the lower reaches «Volga, in Eastern Europe, in the Pripyat-Desna basin. Later, fir is pushed aside by some other species of trees, preserved mainly in the mountainous regions of Europe, the Caucasus, Western Asia and Eastern Europe.»
But I would like to emphasize that even during the peak of the Valdai glaciation, when, unlike Western Europe, «within the Russian plain, forests occupied a large area in the form of a wide strip crossing it in the direction from the south-west to the north-east», they were represented mainly by birch-pine and spruce-fir forests. At the same time: «Regarding the nemoral and subtropical shrub-forest types of vegetation, the following should be noted: the fact that these types were preserved in the south of Europe during the Valdai glaciation era clearly indicate the results of the florocenogenetic analysis of modern vegetation of the Mediterranean countries.»
How in such a situation, when the climate of Asia Minor has not practically changed from the time of the Valdai glaciation to the present day, fir could be pushed to the mountainous regions of Europe, the Caucasus and, most importantly, Asia Minor, where it is currently not available. According to modern vegetation maps in the Old World, the range of the fir genus is the northeast of the European part of Russia, Siberia, China (northwest), slightly in the Caucasus and the Western Mediterranean.
G. I. Tanfilyev noted that: «Siberian species enter the European taiga, except for larch, also fir and cedar. Of these, cedar grows on this side of the Urals in small groups and separate trees among forests and other species, while larch and fir even form forests in places.»
Currently, fir occupies 12 million hectares in Russia. Thus, there is no certainty that fir grew in antiquity in Asia Minor, but the fact that it had and has an extensive range in northeastern Europe and in Siberia is a fact.
Siberian fir
White fir
Pine (Pinus), a genus of coniferous evergreen trees and creeping shrubs of the pine family. Height 1.5—75m. Needle needles. Pines are photophilous, form forests and groves on well-drained soils and rocky slopes, but can also grow in wetlands.
They live up to 350 years. About 100 species in the forest zone of Eurasia and North America, less often in the mountains of the tropics of the Northern Hemisphere.
There are about 12 species in the USSR. Scots pine (P.silvestris) forms forests in the European part and Siberia. A tree 40 m high. It provides timber and ornamental wood, fuel, resin, var, turpentine, turpentine essential oil, rosin. From the needles get vitamin C.
On the Kola and Scandinavian peninsulas, the Lapland pine (P.lapponica), close to it, grows in the mountainous parts of the Crimea and Western Transcaucasia – the Crimean pine, or Pallasiana (P. pallasiana).
In Transcaucasia, the Pitsunda pine (P. pityusa) is known.
Siberian cedar pine, cedar dwarf pine, and Korean or Manchurian pine (P. koraiensis) grow in the USSR. It grows in the Far East, in the mountains of Manchuria, northeast of Korea and in Japan (Honshu Island).
V.V. Ivanov and T. V. Gamkrelidze write that pine and its varieties from ancient times are represented in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus and the Carpathians, as well as in the Black Sea region.
But it should be noted that in ancient times, pine was spread by no means only in these territories. So, at the peak of the Valdai glaciation in the Oka basin, spruce-pine forests of the north-taiga type were noisy, in the middle reaches of the Desna forests with spruce and Siberian cedar pine were locally distributed.
According to paleogeography in the ancient Holocene (2 thousand years ago), spruce, pine and alder were present in the forests of the Vologda Oblast. A similar situation was in other areas of the central part and the north of Eastern Europe. In general, conifers began to play a significant role in the vegetation cover of Eurasia since the Triassic period, which began about 240 million years ago.
«Among modern conifers, the most ancient families are Araucariaceae, Podocarpaceae, and especially pine… plant residues (including pollen grains), more or less confidently related to the genus pine, are known from Jurassic deposits.
Currently, forests with a predominance of pine are most pronounced in the northern regions of Eurasia and North. America. Pine forests in Russia occupy an area of 108 million hectares.
The range of the genus pine is the whole of Europe, Siberia, the Himalayas, the Pamirs, China, Japan, and Asia Minor. In Western Asia there is no pine.
Pine forests are not as significant as T.V. Gamkrelidze and Vyach. Sun Ivanov, and in the Caucasus. So G. I. Tanfilyev, describing the forests of the Western Transcaucasia, notes that: «Very characteristic of the coast, found only at the very sea, is a seaside pine tree, a tall tree growing in small groups between Novorossiysk and Cape Pitsunda, and only at this last point it forms a large forest.»
He notes that «in the forests on Talash there are no conifers at all, except yew and juniper,» and «in the East Caucasus, only pine and juniper are found from coniferous species, of which pine, however, goes only to the meridian of Elisavetpol.»
Lapland pine
Common pine